Let’s Play: Glory of Heracles III Part 19

I keep mentioning this game in my articles and have used several sample movie scenes of it as well. But one really needs to have experienced the game in full to appreciate its quality. If you haven’t been spoiled yet (or even if you have), watch this series of youtube videos first before you read any of the related articles. I’m planning a weekly release schedule.

Our heroes take to the skies and finally find out what’s up with the sun. A divine problem indeed and the problem turns out to be as much the one of a son as that of the sun.

These last few episodes in which half the world was subjected to prolonged night time might use characters from Greek myth but it is as much inspired by Japanese myth as well. The Japanese sun goddess Amaterasu hid herself in a cave to make the whole world go dark for a longer period of time, also a result of gods quarreling.

It is interesting that Japan has a sun goddess but associating the sun to male gods like in the Greek case is much more common in the myths of the world.

Another case of associating a person with the sun, this time by name, would be Tidus from FFX. His name is actually pronounced Tida and that means sun in the dialect of Okinawa, an island belonging to the Japanese archipel but with its own culture and language of the kingdom of Ryūkyū. Having his name read Tidus in Western letters is most likely a play on latin noun endings indicating gender, -us being male and -a being female. A male sun in the West, a female one in the East.

And as Amaterasu hid in a cave, the East in GoH3 went dark. And as the West gained prominence, the sun only shined there anymore.